One Cinequest MUST SEE is WILD TALES, the darkly comic Argentine collection of revenge stories. Wild Tales has been a festival hit around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. One of its vignettes features one of my favorite screen actors, Ricardo Darin (the Argentine Joe Mantegna). See it at Cinequest before it gets to Bay Area art houses in the next few weeks.
I liked the Nerd Olympics documentary SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM, which has its North American premiere tonight in Camera 12.
I’ll be watching the Norwegian comedy CHASING BERLUSCONI because I loved the filmmaker’s hilarious King Curling at the 2012 Cinequest.
I’ve also heard from some insiders that the Hungarian comedy FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON is especially promising.
It’s time to dive into the 2015 version of the San Jose film festival Cinequest running from tomorrow through March 8. This year’s program looks GREAT. You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page (which you may wish to bookmark). Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.
Here are my 18 best bets at Cinequest 2015:
WILD TALES: the darkly comic Argentine collection of revenge stories. Wild Tales has been a festival hit (Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance) around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. One of its vignettes features one of my favorite screen actors, Ricardo Darin (the Argentine Joe Mantegna). See it at Cinequest before it gets to Bay Area art houses on March 6. Ann Thompson (Thompson on Film) will be receiving a Media Legacy Award at the screening.
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: The ever-radiant Juliette Binoche plays an actress now relegated to the older role in her breakthrough play, with her younger role going to Kristen Stewart (All About Eve, anyone?). And Stewart just became the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar) for this performance.
’71: Everybody says that this thriller about a British soldier trapped overnight in a hostile Northern Ireland neighborhood during the Troubles is pedal-to-the-metal intensity.
SLOW WEST: This offbeat Western with Michael Fassbender won a prize at Sundance.
QUEEN AND COUNTRY: Director John Boorman’s Korean War-Era quasi-sequel to his Hope and Glory. Boorman (Deliverance) will appear at the screening. Silicon Valley release on March 6.
L’ATALANTE: The 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. Richard von Busack, the highly respected film critic for Metro, will receive a Media Legacy Award at the screening.
Here are my pre-festival picks from among the films that I’ve seen:
DRAMA:
ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters.
THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult.
COMEDY:
LOS HAMSTERS: A biting darkly hilarious Mexican social satire.
DIRTY BEAUTIFUL: An American indie comedy that is decidedly NOT a by-the-numbers battle of the sexes.
DOCUMENTARY:
ASPIE SEEKS LOVE: A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a guy looking for love like anyone else, but whose social skills are handicapped by Asberger’s.
MEET THE HITLERS: Tracking down real people burdened with the Fuhrer’s name, this successful doc weaves together both light-hearted and very dark story threads.
I’ve also gotten tips from insiders about some other very promising films (that I haven’t seen yet):
CORN ISLAND: Reportedly transcendent Georgian drama.
FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON: Hungarian comedy.
GUARD DOG: dark and violent Peruvian thriller. US premiere.
MILWAUKEE: US indie sex and relationship comedy. World premiere.
THREE WINDOWS AND A HANGING: Searing Kosovan drama.
Take a look at the program and the passes and tickets. (If you want to support Silicon Valley’s most important cinema event while skipping the lines, the $100 donation for Express Line Access is an awesome deal.) You can download the Festival Guide from this page.
Cinequest Director of Programming/Associate Director Mike Rabehl
“Everybody always thinks that you watch a bunch of films and you pick what you would like – but it’s not like that.”
Michael Rabehl is Cinequest’s Director of Programming/Associate Director. He’s held the position of Director of Programming since 1996, which makes Cinequest 2015 the twentieth festival program that bears his mark.
So how does he select the 190 (short and feature) films in the festival? He’s looking primarily for quality, production values, strong writing and strong acting. “I like it when people think about the movie.” It’s “not all for me”, but “what an audience may like”. Rabehl is looking for movies of interest to Silicon Valley’s population, so he sifts especially carefully through the Asian, Spanish language and tech-oriented films. If a film will be released theatrically, the release must be after Cinequest’s run in late winter. (Last year, about ten Cinequest selections ultimately got a theatrical release).
About 80% of the films programmed at Cinequest are submitted by the filmmakers. Rabehl recruits the other 20%, after discovering them in other film festivals himself or with the help of his European and New York movie scouts.
Each year Cinequest receives about 2400 submissions. Rabehl leads screening teams (one team for narrative features, one for docs, one for shorts, etc.) who watch and evaluate every film. They winnow the total down by 92% – down to the 190 movies that actually make the festival program. One of those submissions, Miss India America, will receive its world premiere at the California Theater as a spotlight film.
There are more than enough submissions to fill the festival program. Rabehl says that this year there were “at least 71 titles that would have been great for us, but there’s just not enough space”. Keeping the filmmaker in mind, he says “We don’t want to be somebody’s world premiere at 9 AM”.
Rabehl laughed when I told him that people think that I see an unusually high number of movies (150-200) each year. He annually sees about 800, with 650 of them entered in his festival spreadsheet. Rabehl has personally seen all but two of the movies in this year’s Cinequest (all except for two high buzz choices that would be no-brainers for any film fest).
Each year Rabehl goes on scouting trips to identify possible Cinequest entries at other festivals – always to the Toronto International Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival and then to a different third fest each year. How does Rabehl navigate a film festival himself? He looks for films that “will work at Cinequest” and is always on the hunt for potential spotlight films.
At the industry-oriented Toronto fest in mid-September, he has the discipline to eschew the big Oscar-bait movies that will open soon as prestige Holiday movies (too early for Cinequest). Toronto has a professional audience, he notes, and Montreal (late August-early September) has more normal film fest audience.
Rabehl is able to be more of a “film fan” at Montreal. He values his enduring relationship with the strong national film programs of Norway and Belgium, which results in some wonderful nuggets for Cinequest. (Think of the hilarious King Curling in 2012.) At Montreal in 2013, he latched on to Ida, the jewel of the 2014 Cinequest – and since universally acclaimed, the winner of the 2015 Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar and #2 on my list of the Best Movies of 2014.
Throughout the year, Rabehl’s ascerbic observations make @cqMike the funniest guy on Twitter. But, in person, he is engaging, not particularly edgy; and deeply passionate about cinema.
Rabehl started helping Cinequest in 1994, and became its Director of Programming in 1996: “I kind of fell into it.” Rabehl had been making short films himself, and his producer had been programming Cinequest as a volunteer and was ready to move on. Rabehl met with Cinequest co-founder and CEO Halfdan Hussey over Thai food, discovered their common vision and the rest, as they say, is Silicon Valley cinema history. Rabehl “wasn’t thinking long-term, but it became long-term.” “I don’t like isolated work”, preferring the collaboration with others that putting together a film fest brings.
In Rabehl’s first Cinequest, the fest expanded to seven days (it’s now thirteen days) and attracted appearances by Kevin Spacey and Jackie Chan. That gave everyone a future glimpse into what Silicon Valley’s film festival has become today.
“When I see audience members excited about being here and talking to each other about the movies, that’s why I do this.”
TOMORROW: Mike Rabehl looks at the 2015 Cinequest.
The Academy has just gotta do something because this show is becoming more and more unwatchable every year. The three hours and 9 minutes of this year’s extravanagnza had only seven memorable “Oscar moments” and six of them were not in the script – the heartfelt acceptance speeches of winners J.K. Simmons, Patricia Arquette, Pawel Pawlikowski, Common, Graham Moore and Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The ONLY brilliant moment in the telecast that had been planned by the producers was John Legend’s performance of the song Glory from the movie Selma.
But, generally, the Best Song category chews up way too much time and is often a buzz kill. Except for Legend, it was bad this year, too – and the Everything Is Awesome number was hallucinogenicly bad.
In the last two years, the Academy has even ruined the Memorium montage – usually one of the most moving and evocative moments. This year, the producers didn’t even show any stills or clips from the artist’s cinematic work, and they bracketed it with an acting school emoting lesson by Meryl Streep and an irrelevant song by Jennifer Hudson.
The worst of the broadcast, of course, was the serious of forced gags like the one about Octavia Spencer guarding the Neil Patrick Harris’ Oscar predictions; unfunny the first time, it wore and wore until Harris’ and Spencer’s dignity were completely eroded. Horrible.
As to the awards themselves? I was deliriously happy that Ida got its due as Best Foreign Language Picture, a choice that proved that some taste and decency lingers in the Academy. I was sorry that Boyhood – the best movie of the decade, let alone the year – didn’t win Best Picture, but Birdman is pretty special, too.
Coincidentally, I was recording the 2006 Children of Men during the Oscar broadcast, so afterwards I could revisit the amazing 8-minute battle scene shot by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (deserving winner for Birdman). One of the greatest single shots in cinema. Felicidades, Chivo.
Camellias – In Birdman, Riggan (Michael Keaton) asks for camellias for his dressing room and wants anything except roses; his daughter later brings him lilacs. (We could have also gone with the theater critic’s martinis or the sliced lunch meat in Riggan’s dressing room.)
Beverages
Pub pints of beer – Frequently consumed in pub scenes in The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.
Starter
Pizza – from Andrew and Nicole’s pizza date in Whiplash.
Hummus – Chris Kyle and his buddies share a family meal at the Iraqi home of the guy hiding a cache of arms in American Sniper. (With so many excellent recent movies set in the Middle East, we’ve had Hummus before along with Kabob Koubideh, Khoresh Ghormeh and Fatayer bi Sabanekh.)
Graduation party appetizers – from Boyhood , a movie with MANY unforgettable scenes (lots of family dining, snacks and the diner scene), but with pretty unmemorable food choices. We thought that tortilla chips with a five layer bean and guacamole dip would fit with this Texas graduation party.
Main Course
Fried chicken and fixins – requested by the appreciative Southern Christian Leadership Conference team upon their arrival at their hostess’ home in Selma.
Dessert
Courtesan au chocolate – the elaborate filled pastry smuggled to Gustave (Ray Fiennes) in The Grand Budapest Hotel.
On my Oscar Dinner page, you can see past menus and some photos of past Oscar Dinners, including the famous Severed Hand Ice Sculpture for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone.
Every year, we watch the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, we had sushi for Lost in Translation and cowboy campfire beans for Brokeback Mountain – you get the idea.
On my Oscar Dinner page, you can see past menus and some photos. In 2009, Frost/Nixon and Milk were stumping me until I realized that they were all set in the 1970s. So we had celery sticks stuffed with pimento spread, pigs in a blanket and Tequila Sunrises. And we’ll never top the Severed Hand Ice Sculpture for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone (above).
Anyway, here’s our menu for 2015:
Table decorations
Lilacs – In Birdman, Riggan asks for camellias for his dressing room and wants anything except roses; his daughter later brings him lilacs. (We could have also gone with the theater critic’s martinis or the sliced lunch meat in Riggan’s dressing room.)
Beverages
Pub pints of beer – Frequently consumed in pub scenes in The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything. (I drink Ballast Point Sculpin, but we’re going to pretend that it’s Newcastle.)
Starter
Pizza – from the pizza date in Whiplash.
Hummus – Chris Kyle and his buddies share a family meal at the Iraqi home of the guy hiding a cache of arms in American Sniper. (With so many excellent recent movies set in the Middle East, we’ve had Hummus before along with Kabob Koubideh, Khoresh Ghormeh and Fatayer bi Sabanekh.)
Graduation party appetizers – from Boyhood , a movie with MANY unforgettable scenes (lots of family dining, snacks and the diner scene), but with pretty unmemorable food choices.
Main Course
Fried chicken and fixins – requested by the appreciative Southern Christian Leadership Conference team upon their arrival at their hostess’ home in Selma.
Dessert
Courtesan au chocolate – the elaborate filled pastry smuggled to the Ray Fiennes character in The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Want to see the prototype for Orange Is the New Black? In the 1950 Caged, Eleanor Parker (who died last year) played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod.
Caged is a Message Picture, editorializing that the prison experience unnecessarily molds inmates into criminals. Although its trailer (available on IMDb), with its breathlessly sensationalistic narration, makes the film appear overwrought, Caged is edgy enough to have currency with modern sensibilities. Parker’s newbie is NOT innocent and wrongly convicted – as the movie opens, she’s one of the crew in a bank heist. She experiences hellish brutalization behind bars. There’s also behind-the-bars pregnancy, inmate suicide and implied lesbianism. The ending, when the protagonist is finally released and can choose between going straight or going bad, is filled with the cynicism and despair of film noir.
Eleanor Parker hit every note on her character’s slide from the Good Kid who made a dumb mistake all the way down to a Hard Case seasoned with hopelessness. (In a stunningly competitive year, she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday, along with Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard, and both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for All About Eve.)
But this is Hope Emerson’s movie. Emerson draws the audience’s attention every moment that she’s on-screen. Her prison matron is not just harsh but sadistic. Emerson was able to radiate meanness with every glance, and took full advantage of her dominating physicality. It’s a performance that still works today.
This was the apex of Emerson’s career. She stood a big-boned 6″2″, and then as now, Hollywood didn’t have many parts for an actress with her appearance. She started on Broadway in her early 30s (as an Amazon in Lysistrata), was successful in radio voice-over work and managed 43 screen credits. She was 53 years old when she made Caged.
Caged also features the fine character actresses Agnes Moorehead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman).
Sixty-five years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever. TCM is featuring Caged on February 20 during its 31 Days of Oscar. It’s also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Xbox Video and Flixster.
It’s time to get ready for the 2015 version of the San Jose film festival Cinequest, coming up on February 28 through March 8. At the media launch, Cinequest CEO and co-founder Halfdan Hussey pronounced himself “totally stoked”. We all should be stoked because Cinequest 2015 will host artists from 50 countries and present 91 world, North American or US premieres.
This is the 25th anniversary of the festival, but Hussey described Cinequest 2015 as “about today and tomorrow”, referencing both cutting edge cinema and the film technology of the future.
One of the surefire festival hits will be Clouds of Sils Maria, where the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche plays an actress now relegated to the older role in her breakthrough play, with the younger role going to Kristen Stewart (All About Eve, anyone?). The Twilight series has obscured what a good actress Stewart can be (Into the Wild, Adventureland, The Runaways), and her performance in The Clouds of Sils Maria has been getting raves.
Ann Thompson (Thompson on Film) will be receiving a Media Legacy Award and screening the Argentine revenge drama Wild Tales, which has been a festival hit at Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance.
Other highlights:
Rosario Dawson will appear to receive a Maverick Spirit Award.
That award will also go to Deliverance director John Boorman, who will be screening his newest work Queen and Country.
Richard von Busack, the highly respected film critic for Metro, will receive a Media Legacy Award and screen L’Atalante, the 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion.
But the real treasure at Cinequest 2015 is likely to be found among the hitherto less well-known films – like last year’s Cinequest jewel Ida, which is high on my list of Best Movies of 2014.
Take a look at the program and the passes and tickets. (If you want to support Silicon Valley’s most important cinema event while skipping the lines, the $100 donation for Express Line Access is an awesome deal.) You can download the Festival Guide from this page.
As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the latest.
Actor James Shigeta, who along with writer-director Sam Fuller, broke ground in 1959’s The Crimson Kimono, died in July at age 85. Shigeta’s first movie role was in The Crimson Kimono, another sensationalistic and deliciously exploitative cop noir from the great Sam Fuller. Always looking to add some shock value, Fuller delivered a Japanese-American leading man (Shigeta), an inter-racial romance and a stripper victim. The groundbreaking aspect of The Crimson Kimono is that Fuller’s writing and Shigeta’s performance normalized the Japanese-American character. Shigeta’s Detective Joe Kojaku is a regular hardboiled, jaded and troubled film noir protagonist. Of course, Fuller certainly relished the fact that many 1959 Americans would have been unsettled by a Japanese-American man’s intimate encounter with a white woman – another groundbreaking moment in American cinema.
We’re going to miss some other cinematic masters. Some icons. And some that we were expecting to create yet more film treasure:
Gordon Willis: groundbreaking behind the lens as the Prince of Darkness.
Malik Bendjelloul: At 36, just after winning an Oscar for Searching for Sugar Man.
Harold Ramis: How many filmmakers have written two films as good as Animal House and Groundhog Day?
And Philip Seymour Hoffman: His heartbreaking death was a punch to the gut on Super Bowl Sunday. That’s the thing about addiction – not everybody makes it.
Myrna Loy in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES – the second best wife ever
Happy Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa The Love of My Life!
This year, I cherished sharing my VERY BEST movie experiences with her – my top two movies Boyhood and Ida, along with the very moving Alive Inside. (She loves to catch me weeping at a movie.)
She tolerated my spending huge chunks of time at Cinequest, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Noir City and French Cinema Now. She even accompanied me to four Cinequest screenings (The Grand Seduction- YAAY!) and sat through the looooong Mr. Turner at the Mill Valley Film Fest.
Without her pressing me, I wouldn’t have seen Gone Girl, and that would have been a big loss for me. It was even HER glorious idea to settle in for a Bogie double feature of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep!
She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog, and I appreciate her and love her. Happy Anniversary, Honey!
